Each day, Spelunky generates one set of levels that’s the same for every player. Each day, we play them. Some of us make videos of our attempts. You can browse mine above (click the listy icon in the top left), or see everyone’s on the blog we set up at spelunkyexplorersclub.com.

On the rest of this post are the earliest dailies we posted.More info!

Special Notice

I’ve finally done what I should have in the first place, and set up the Explorers’ Club as its own blog. I’ve also renamed it to the Explorers Club because that apostrophe was annoying me. Therefore, this’ll be the last time I update this post, and all future videos and scores will go up on our new home at: spelunkyexplorersclub.com.

It’ll be the same bunch of people, but they can now post their videos themselves, so the place won’t shut down when I’m away. It also takes up much less of my time each day this way, which means I can keep doing it for longer. Explore force!

Tom Francis – The Black Market timebomb

When he approaches the Ankh cave, you can see there’s a chunk missing from the shop nearest it – that’s presumably where a red frog blew up and triggered the terrorist alert. Must have been eaten by a pitcher plant or prodded by a tiki trap. I didn’t hear a blast, but it was probably drowned out by the gunfire – I think their reaction would have been instant.

Anthony Burch – Sticky

After this run, I got to hell by repeating the mantra, “always use bombs”. This run is the reason why I came up with that mantra.

Nika Harper – Bad Things Are Bad

Graham Smith – Black Market Frogsplosion (w/ commentary)

In case there were any doubts, everything can go wrong so quickly if you just get flustered. Damsels will be the death of me.

Jason Killingsworth – Arrow To The Heart

This death really hurt, and right on the City of Gold’s doorstep. Completely out of nowhere, no chance to prepare for it or react to it. Insta-kill, game over.

Rich Stanton

God damn it Derek Yu. God damn it!

Richard Stanton hitting the high notes on the 13th attempt at Spelunky’s Daily Challenge! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and he’ll hurl the controller at the wall. Enjoy!

Chris Thursten – Why Is Everything Sticky

I’m doing these again and I’ve got a webcam and a microphone and everything. There’s some competent god damn Spelunky going down in here, let me tell you.

Sorry about the frame rate issues. If anyone has some hot Open Broadcaster tips to share, leave a comment.

Philippa Warr

Today I tried cheating. Chris’s video which I used for the cheating is here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6CHhK…) but I don’t advise you watch it because it didn’t help :(

Explorer Scores

Jason Killingsworth – Temple 4-2 – $218,600

Anthony Burch – Temple 4-1 – $126,375

Tom Francis – Black Market 2-4 – $124,175

Aaron Linde – Black Market 2-4 – $92,275

Graham Smith – Black Market 2-4 – $74,500

Chris Thursten – Jungle 2-2 – $26,550

Rich Stanton – Jungle 2-1 – $42,150

Richard Boeser – Mines 1-3 – $30,500

Nika Harper – Mines 1-3 – $5,400

Chris Donlan – Mines 1-2 – $21,200

Tom’s note: Yep, something happened in the Black Market that day. Something bad. I imagine less than 5% of anyone who went there survived, so extra kudos to Anthony and Jason here. Jason, of course, had the advantage of already knowing the shopkeepers would be mad because he had taken the precaution of stealing from and murdering them throughout the game.

Tom’s note: At PAX in Seattle last week, Anthony and Ashly Burch invited me and Nika Harper up to play Spelunky co-op with them on-stage. We manage to keep our shit together for like 3 minutes. Starts at 1:43:00 in this video.

Tom Francis – The ship in the shop

At 15:18 I don’t mean Ankh, I mean Mattock. And I don’t mean shop, I mean gambling parlour.

One of my deaths here was predictable and avoidable. The first, though, I’m a bit baffled by. Some kind of area-of-effect stun?

Also I’m wrong when I say I needed all 3 ropes.

Anthony Burch – Fun is a four letter word

I wasn’t having the best day today. And also in Spelunky.

Tom’s note: Anthony and I lose the Ankh – and our shit – in exactly the same place today!

Jason Killingsworth – To Hell in a Jetpackbasket

Managed to run the table on my first Daily Challenge. It was fun to have almost everything I touch turn into a journal entry and see achievements unlocking left and right.

Philippa Warr

I BOUGHT A TELEPORTER

Rich Stanton – He dozen know what he’s doing!

The twelfth in this little series of Spelunky videos may well be the most disappointing – this is an exercise in futility, topped off with a display of arrogance that is roundly and justly punished!

Hopefully it’s not obvious how hungover I am :P

Richard Boeser – Not listening to my own advice

Not paying enough attention and again getting killed by an arrow trap.

Explorer Scores

Jason Killingsworth – Hell 5-4 – $743,350

Aaron Linde – Ice Caves 3-3 – $185,500

Tom Francis – Ice Caves 3-3 – $32,975

Anthony Burch – Ice Caves 3-3 – $6,550

Chris Donlan – Jungle 2-1 – $31,800

Nika Harper – Mines 1-4 – $19,300

Richard Boeser – Mines 1-3 – $14,600

Graham Smith – Mines 1-2 – $26,300

Rich Stanton – Mines 1-2 – $12,900

Tom’s note: Ice Caves 3 once again claims three victims. More than usual died in the Mines. And Jason comes 26th in the world with that ridiculous performance, on his first ever daily. Sickening.

Explorer Scores

Tom’s note! I’m back from GDC Europe, and on the 29th I leave again for PAX Prime. So I’m afraid I don’t have time to go back and fill in all the days I missed, but I will keep up with the new days while I’m home.

If there are particular Explorers you like, subscribe to their YouTube channels! I’ve subscribed to all of them, so my youtube.com/feed/subscriptions is like 90% Spelunky now. Even if you don’t use YouTube, you can add them as an RSS feed to whatever you do use. My channel has some scraps of an insanely lucky run I did while I was away, and I also put up non-daily practice vids there sometimes.

Tom Francis – A pond of skeletal fish

I’m back from Germany, with tales of why I was in Germany, and doing Spelunky dailies in Germany.

I think I stand by what I was trying to do at the end here. The only thing I’d change is that I now see a way I could have used a bomb instead of a rope right at the end, which would have taken more time, but killed me much less.

Anthony Burch – Scariest Daily Ever

What a nightmare. My goodness.

Tom Bramwell – FOCUS

I didn’t get that much further today than yesterday, but the performance overall was a lot stronger. As Toby in the West Wing would say, I managed to get more blood going to it, and it shows. Hoping to penetrate even deeper tomorrow, but today’s run still includes rat-throwing, ghost-dodging and an inevitable outcome. You’ll see it coming. Enjoy.

Chris Thursten – Mammoth Error

Stay here, dear Man Damsel. This is something I have to do alone.

There are a few issues with framerate in this video – Fraps stuff that I’ll try to fix for tomorrow.

Tom’s note! I won’t be able to update this post for about a week as I’m away at GDC Europe, but I should be able to keep playing and hopefully recording.

I’m suggesting the other Explorers tweet their YouTube links and tag them #SpelunkyExplorers – that way you can just search for that to see all their runs as they go up.

Tom Francis – Where is this lift taking me?

This might be my funniest death. Sorry for the laugh-explosions, my headset broke so I’m using a new mic.

Phil Savage – I blame a misunderstanding

Why are subterranean shopkeepers so damned paranoid? Anyway, pretty good run, despite a painful number of mistakes. Also: not sure why the Ankh resurrected me inside a giant head containing a secret door leading to the regular next level. So that was weird.

Tom Bramwell

Today’s Daily Challenge is brought to you by my righteous anger! Nothing to do with the game, and I sound fairly normal in the video, but believe me, I’m seething. Will this affect my play? Will I finally get a jetpack?

Anthony Burch – Arrogance

I literally — LITERALLY — could not have been closer.

Dan Stapleton

I thought things were gonna go well after buying a bunch of health. Oh well.

Dan Griliopoulos – Snap Happy

A fairly slow run until I hit a dark level with one heart and decide to leave the torch, take the camera (around 8:15). When I drop the camera, it’s by accident. And then a sad death-by-pot-spider. :(

(And I really don’t know why Avidemux is swapping the blue and red channels. And screwing up the sound.)

Mike Rose – Full on final boss meltdown

I’ve never managed to reach the final boss before. Today I did, and for the last 4 minutes of the video, you can hear my voice become more and more filled with terror.

It’s also well worth watching the crazy death-defying stunt that happens at 15:30. I have no idea how I did not die there.

Tom Senior – ‘Splode Toad

The latest daily, recorded in the office, so no voiceover for this one. After the death of another pug, I have decided to be nicer to pugs, or at least do a better job of tracking how much health they probably have left before throwing them at a dart trap.

Graham Smith – Boomerang, Impaled

I deliberately taunted the boomerang guy, forgetting that he wouldn’t run towards me, but would THROW HIS BOOMERANG.

Chris Thursten – Which Button Is For Sorry

Problem A: I haven’t played Spelunky in about a year.
Problem B: I am dreadful at Spelunky.
Problem C can be determined as the sum of Problem A and Problem B.

Graham Smith – Bat, Impaled

Forgot to hit the record button from the start. Naturally, did much better than recent attempts. Naturally, died shortly after I started recording.

Tom Francis – You’re probably wondering why I panicked

Annotations aren’t working but when I say “The one thing I do have…” I was going to say “The pitcher’s mitt,” which I thought would be more useful than it was.

Thank God Spelunky ignores your controls for a moment after a level loads.

Nika Harper – Spelunky Practice

I’ve only played it once about six months ago (hi Pentadact!) so I decided to share my shame of being terrible at Spelunky no matter what I do.

Anthony Burch – Cockatiel Power

The only thing I’ve learned from this is that I need Beast on my shoulder whenever I start.

Tom Bramwell

Oh man. There are some bad early mistakes in today’s run. They cost me dear later on. There’s some unsympathetic procedural level generation going on, too, but I can’t blame that entirely for my woes. Quick reminder: I spice up my Daily Challenge by always seeking to obtain the shotgun and jetpack when I’m aware they’re in a level. Boom.

Mike Rose – It’s a long time since I’ve managed to do this

Pretty decent run today – not much cash, but I was focusing on getting as far as possible anyway. The death just shows you how (un)familiar I am with the Temple enemies.

Explorer Scores

Anthony Burch – Temple 4-4 – $90,500

Phil Savage – Temple 4-2 – $77,250

Mike Rose – Temple 4-1 – $42,000

Tom Francis – Jungle 2-3 – $45,025

Graham Smith – Jungle 2-3 – $27,950

Tom Bramwell – Jungle 2-3 – $3,950

Alexander Bruce – Jungle 2-2 – $43,075

Tom Senior – Jungle 2-1 – $17,300

Chris Donlan – Jungle 2-1 – $5,700

Steve Hogarty – Mines 1-4 – $24,600

Alex Wiltshire – Mines 1-4 – $18,700

Dan Stapleton – Mines 1-3 – $27,400

Nika Harper – Mines 1-2 – $9,100

Alec Meer – Mines 1-2 – $7,100

Dan Griliopoulos – Mines 1-1 – $4,000

Tom’s note: Me, Graham and Tom Bramwell all impaled ourselves on spikes on the same level. Graham and I were both trying to avoid the same bat, and died a few feet from each other.

Although overlaying other people’s runs as ghosts might be tricky, it’d be amazing if you could see the corpses of all your friends who’d played this Daily already – fossilised in the rock if they died somewhere that’s still solid in your playthrough.

Tom Francis – Let’s go to the Worm Level!

That will be the first in what you’ll see is a series of bad decisions I’m about to make.

Anthony Burch – Semi-Constant Vigilance

In which I talk about how Spelunky is about mitigating the chance of making stupid mistakes, right before making a stupid mistake.

Graham Smith – Bomb, Rock, Impaled

I AM GOOD AT SPELUKY. I AM. I AM.

I AM.

Tom’s note: This death is insane.

Dan Griliopoulos – N00b run

At least I saved the girl.

Tom’s note: I do not know why the red and blue channels in Dan’s video are switched.

Mike Rose – I just hate them all

Did better this time around, although that death was just uncalled for. I also realized just after I finished recording this that we’re meant to be going for distance through the game, rather than cash, so that’s definitely going to change my tactics for tomorrow!

Tom Senior – That was, in retrospect, foolish

My shot at the Spelunky daily challenge 14/08/2013, Did it end in total victory and obscene riches? No, of course not, but there are at least a few moments of sheer panic on the journey to my inevitable demise.

Explorer Scores

Anthony Burch – Ice Caves 3-3 – $28,650

Mike Rose – Ice Caves 3-1 – $69,700

Alexander Bruce – Jungle 2-4 – $37,075

Phil Savage – Jungle 2-3 – $29,500

Tom Bramwell – Jungle 2-3 – $9,350

Tom Francis – Worm Level 2-2 – $50,850

Tom Senior – Jungle 2-1 – $22,875

Alex Wiltshire – Jungle 2-1 – $8,550

Chris Donlan – Mines 1-4 – $25,500

Dan Griliopoulos – Mines 1-4 – $25,300

Dan Stapleton – Mines 1-3 – $32,500

Graham Smith – Mines 1-2 – $2,600

Alec Meer – Mines 1-1 – $7,700

Tom’s note: No-one made it to the Temple today! Must have been a tough one.

Anthony Burch – Welcome to the Deathpit

On the one hand: god dammit. On the other hand: pretty cool way to die. On a third hand: god DAMMIT.

Tom’s note: Anthony’s death is so crazy and sudden that I had to rewind a few times before I really saw what happened. It’s a spoiler for the vid, but if you’re curious I took a shot of the crucial moment that explains it.

Tom Francis – Tight spot

Well, that got interesting.

Graham Smith – Crushed

Oh the ghost is coming, I wonder what direction from. Hey, the room is rumbling. I don’t remember ghosts making things rumble? Wait, what did I just pick up again? Oh right yeah I remember from the literally thousands of other times I’ve survived this scenario.

What has gone wrong in me?

Mike Rose

My first Spelunky Daily Challenge video for Spelunky Explorers’ Club, and I thought I was doing pretty well, unless the most embarrassing death I’ve ever experienced happened.

Going to try turning the music down a little tomorrow, since you can barely hear anything I’m saying.

Alex Wiltshire – Hail of arrow

I’ve brought in my 8-year-old kid to help out. He didn’t help out. But at least it’s funny.

Alec Meer – Humiliation In Blue

I am RUBBISH. Like, really, unbelievably, stupidly rubbish. And so is my microphone, it transpires, so there’s just some barely-audible muttering. Probably for the best, mind.

Tom Senior

In which, extremely hungover, I discover new levels of incompetence in the Spelunky daily 13/08/2013. Things I learned – 1. So THAT’s how ropes, capes and cavemen work. 2. There is no corpse that can’t be weaponised.

Tom Bramwell

Today on the Daily Challenge, we have more views on the scoring system courtesy of you guys (thanks!) and a sequence of levels where the gods of procedural generation have laid off on the spider jerks for once. It’s not a happy ending, though, which is as we’ve come to expect.

Phil Savage – I blame the boomerang

In which I get a boomerang, and my confidence overtakes my ability.

Dan Stapleton

Ran out of rope, kept falling down to the end of the level. Ah well.

Explorer Scores

Alexander Bruce – Temple 4-4 – $327,750

Tom Francis – Temple 4-4 – $141,600

Anthony Burch – Temple 4-3 – $12,175

Tom Bramwell – Ice Caves 3-1 – $8,050

Phil Savage – Jungle 2-4 – $20,575

Dan Stapleton – Jungle 2-2 – $17,175

Tom Senior – Jungle 2-2 – $9,625

Mike Rose – Jungle 2-1 – $48,150

Graham Smith – Mines 1-3 – $22,400

Alec Meer – Mines 1-2 – $19,900

Alex Wiltshire – Mines 1-1 – $9,500

Chris Donlan – Mines 1-1 – $6,900

Special props to Antichamber creator Alexander Bruce for that insane score. Even by Spelunky’s money-only scoring system, he was 20th in the world for this daily.

Explorer Scores

Chris Donlan – Mines 1-3 – $23,200

Tom Bramwell – Mines 1-3 – $16,400

Alec Meer – Mines 1-2 – $14,600

Graham Smith – Mines 1-1 – $7,100

More Info

I’m playing Spelunky’s new Daily Challenge mode every day, as is Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell, and so far we’re both uploading videos of our attempts too. This page will be a home for those, like an old hunting lodge where we (dead) explorers share our tales of adventure.

Tom and I are also a bit unsatisfied with the game’s scoring, which values gold-at-time-of-death over all else. To me, how far you made it through the game is more important, and gold is only relevant to rank players who got equally far.

So when I have time, I’m also going to post a revised leaderboard for each day’s run, ranked by progress first and gold second. It’ll only include those of my friends who are happy to be ranked this way, since it doesn’t make sense to rate anyone by a metric they don’t care about. So this is just for those of us who value spelunking over hoarding – explorers.

Obviously there is a gentleman’s and gentlewoman’s agreement among explorers not to watch other people’s runs before attempting your own. And if you have videos or scores of your own to share, you’re welcome to do so in the comments.

Recording Tips!

In the comments Ben Borthwick points to Open Broadcast Software, which sounds like it does most of this – haven’t used it myself. Points 4 and 5 are relevant either way, the rest is just my setup.

If you can’t get Spelunky to run at the res you want, there’s a file called config.txt you can edit to force it. It’s in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Spelunky\Data or equivalent.

I use FRAPS to record, which is £25 if you don’t want watermarks, but it’s the best screenshotting/video capture thing I’ve used.

FRAPS has a checkbox for ‘Record external input’ – check that and select your mic, and it’ll record game sound and your voice.

I recommend turning the game volume low and the music volume VERY low, to make your voice clearer.

Do a test video to check you’re audible over the game.

Make sure you have masses of free disk space – at 1360×768, a complete 30-minute run of Spelunky takes up about 45 GB.

Once it’s recorded, I use AviDemux to compress it. It’s free and can open almost anything, including .mov files.

Daniel: It is really fun watching how other players deal with the dilemmas thrown at them by the game.

I for one am much braver or stupid as I ploughed on through bat country :)

Ben Borthwick: And my video for my run of the 12th here. Hoping the comment system won't flag me as a spammer if I keep up with the videos at the same pace as everyone else.

Paul Fisher: Fellow developer here, joining in the fun.
Got to the Black Market today and died to a man-eating plant blocking my way out of the shops. Thought 3 blocks was far enough away for a sticky bomb. Sadly not.
Todays run (12 Aug) - 2-2 - $45575

Bit about me: I am a developer of games too and a big fan of the games you guys have worked on :)

Evan: As someone new to Spelunky these videos have been incredibly helpful after the fact (I'm keeping in the spirit and not watching them until after I attempt the day's run). Little things like being able to throw stuff at an upwards angle and grabbing the ledge while sprinting across a two-block gap that I hadn't figured out yet have vastly improved my game. I made it out of the mines today!

I went to play today's challenge and proceeded to immediately fall/get shot/get pounced at the start of the first level. When it showed my score I was ranked #1 in the world. Apparently the daily resets at midnight GMT or ~5 PM my time and I was one of the first people to run it. For a brief moment I was a Spelunky champion.

It's free and open-source, and you can use it to record from several sources (if you want say, a shot of your webcam to record your reactions etc), you can adjust game volume and microphone volume independently from each other and you can output to a local file and/or - if you're low on HDD space like me - you can just broadcast directly to Twitch.tv and then export it from there to a YouTube video. Very handy bit of software.

Awesome plan with the new mini-blog Tom, I'd suspected this may quickly grow slightly big for one post too - I've actually collated the videos from here into a SpelunkyDaily Tumblr so people can view them by death or level reached, I'm tagging all videos from here with "SEC" for Spelunky Explorer's Club.

Jeff K: This has been tons of fun to watch, and thanks for the recording tips! I've been streaming/uploading my last few dailies (Today's is compressing as we speak).

But I think I'm going to shift my goal from scoring high on the leaderboards (i.e. getting tons of money) to just trying to get as far as I can with just the one chance. Whether that's beating Olmec or- should luck smile on me- getting to the City of Gold or even Hell, I think it'll be more fun both to play and watch.

Jason L: You probably spotted this after the fact, but on the 13th your burning hatred of the climbing gloves blinded you to some additional options they gave you.

Jason Killingsworth: Chris! So proud of you for going for the jetpack steal. The best method is just to pick it up and sprint out of the shop, being careful to take flight the second you cross the threshold to avoid the immediate shotgun blast.